


you've only lost the night

by endofmeandeverything



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Depression, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Mental Health Issues, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Suicide Attempt, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 06:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21070205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofmeandeverything/pseuds/endofmeandeverything
Summary: It's never been in Ronan Lynch's character to give up.





	1. Content Warning

This is about a group of teens in a psych unit. While there are no specific discussions of diagnoses, there are explicit depictions of/discussions of: a suicide attempt, depression, alcoholism, an eating disorder, and sexual assault. There are references to/discussions of: obsessive compulsive behavior, bipolar disorder/behavior stemming from bipolar disorder, and child abuse. 

Please keep in mind that each of these issues affect the characters and inform their individual development and interactions with one another. Additionally, please note that the characters’ experiences, perceptions, and opinions (both of themselves and of one another) are not meant to a) represent all people under a particular umbrella, b) be correct and informed at all times, or c) represent authorial opinions on any given subject.

Please proceed with caution if you feel any of the tagged issues may be triggering for you as this content is laced through the story. Additionally, feel free to let me know if you feel additional tags are needed to warn about content I did not disclose.

And finally: this story is not misery porn. There are sad moments, but at its core, this is just two dumb teenagers falling in love.


	2. One

Back when everything was still whole and his heart still beat, Ronan remembers sliding under the bathwater to lay on the bottom of the bathtub. Overhead the light would ripple and the world would shimmer and his mother’s voice would echo down, transmuted into some soft and foreign language as he held his breath until his chest ached and his head swam. Then the water would surge around him and his mother’s hand would spread over his belly, warm and firm and urging him to emerge gasping into the real world to a chorus of laughter and little Matthew shrieking with delight at his reappearance.

Waking up now is nothing like that. 

The light pale and alien and not at all comforting His chest is tight like he’s been holding his breath, but he can feel every torturous thud of his heart, every surge of blood through his veins. His throat is sore, his lips are dry. He feels like the weight of the Atlantic Ocean is pressing him down into the bed.

“Ronan?”

Abruptly, the world comes into sharp focus. It screws with Ronan’s equilibrium, and the stark lines of the ceiling tiles seem to rush down at him. His stomach rolls, his throat clenches, and he rolls onto his side as bile fills his mouth. He can feel the muzzy pleasant blankness draining out of him and pain leaking in to fill him back up. 

Sobering up has always been the fucking worst. Being sober means things stop happening to  _ other  _ people and start happening to  _ him _ .

“Come on, Ronan.”

A hand presses heavy between his shoulder blades as he swallows convulsively, inhaling until the air gets all the way into his lungs, until his eyes stop stinging. He clutches at the rough blanket and drags it across his face.

It’s like his limbs won’t behave, like someone stripped his soul out of his body and it’s wandering around on its own. He drops his head to the pillow and blinks up. He knows all about sobering up and he hates it. The world slowly materializing around him, real and unpleasant. 

“Declan.” His voice sounds foreign to his own ears. Maybe it’s the tone, because his brother’s name sounds remarkably like an apology and Ronan has never willingly apologized to Declan.

Declan doesn’t answer him, just lowers himself into the little plastic chair at Ronan’s bedside like every bit of him hurts as much as Ronan hurts. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward, his jaw squared and tense, his mouth thin. There are lines there that Ronan has never seen before, carved deep as Declan’s jaw clenches and unclenches like it does when he’s choking back a lecture. His brother looks old, here under the fluorescent lights.

Abruptly Declan swallows and shoves his fingertips into his eyes. He blows out a breath through his nose.

For a moment Ronan wants to turn his back on his brother like he used to when Declan would try to talk about  _ his issues _ , but he stays where he is because turning away would be a retreat. Not from Declan, whose face is the picture of defeat, but from his own aching guts.

The silence stretches tight between them.

Finally, Declan licks his bottom lip and squints and Ronan wants to hit him.  _ Spit it out _ , he wants to say, but Declan’s never needed urging to say whatever the hell he wants to say (at least where Ronan is concerned). The silence is making Ronan sick.

“Why would you--”

As the hoarseness in Decan’s voice settles in Ronan’s heart, the urge to pull his blankets up over his head and shove his face into the pillow--to hide, to block out the light--grows until Ronan feels like gagging on it. He shoves his forefinger into his mouth and gnaws at the joint with the urgent desire to taste blood.

Declan puts a hand over his face and rubs at his eyes with his fingers. He lets out an explosive breath. “How could you do that to Mattie?”

The Lynch brothers can all box but  _ fuck  _ does Declan know how to land a hit. The world goes strange and sideways again as Ronan thinks: _ Mattie _ . Sick rises and he can taste blood now but there’s nothing else to be done about the way his insides are rebelling. Where’s Matthew now? Is he here? What happened? Ronan desperately wants to see him and try to explain, but he’s not sure he has the words and he’s not sure he could make Mattie understand and he’s not sure he wants Mattie to see him like this either. He says the only thing that makes sense to him: “No.”

Declan moves from rubbing his eyes to rubbing his mouth. He’s got that line between his eyebrows like he does when he comes home and Ronan is drunk again. Like he’s choking on a thousand words and none of them make sense so he can’t speak at all. Ronan really wants to be angry. He swallows copper. 

“You…” Declan starts. He pushes himself abruptly up. “I can’t. I can’t right now.”

“Where’s Matthew?” Ronan slurs. He doesn’t want to go back to the underwater blur of this room without Declan in it. He can’t go back to listening to the hiss of air and quiver of a stranger’s breath. He wants Declan to stay but he can’t ask for it. He tries to instill  _ stay _ in the quiver of his voice, but Declan is deaf to him now.

“ _ Not _ here. Matthew is not here.” 

For one merciful moment it seems like maybe Declan will forgive him and come back, will sit on the bed with him even if it is in angry silence. For one moment Ronan thinks he can make himself say his brother’s name just loudly enough to stop him from crossing that threshold, but Declan just blows out all his breath and slams the door. 

Ronan sniffs and rolls onto his back, dragging his hand over his face.

The door clicks open and a nurse in obnoxiously magenta scrubs enters. It’s so bright it hurts to look at, and Ronan feels sick again as he thinks:  _ Gansey. Where’s Gansey? _

Because truthfully it should have been Gansey at his bedside.

“We’re glad to see you awake, Mr. Lynch,” says the nurse. Her little name badge is impossible to read and so is her face with its carefully schooled smile that is neither friendly nor condemning. It’s just there. “How are you feeling?”

“Fucking peachy,” Ronan snarls and hates that some of his venom is sapped from the words by the weakness of his voice. “How’d you feel if you tried to off yourself and woke up surrounded by this bullshit?”

The nurse--Amy, Ronan discovers--nods serenely. “And someone will be in shortly to talk to you about that. I’m just here to make sure you’re comfortable and change your bandages.”

It’s all too much for Ronan. Everything cold and sterile and lonely and confusing and he doesn’t know where Declan went or where Mattie is or where Gansey is or even why he’s still here with his chest aching and his arms throbbing and his head spinning and he starts to laugh. “Sure,” he says, “I’m fucking comfortable.”

Ronan despises her the same way he despises Declan. She’s tolerating him, she’s ignoring him, she’s pretending she knows all about his posturing. With Declan, he knows what pressure points will yield results, but Amy is a blank slate and so Ronan hates her because she’s the only person he can hate right now. He hates that she doesn’t meet his eyes when she checks his eyes and ears and throat, when she listens to his heartbeat and pushes painful fingers into his abdomen and asks him if he’s nauseous.

The only relief Ronan gets is an injection into the port of his I.V. that makes things go all hazy again. He wants more. Just a little more, and all the thoughts tumbling through his head would go away. He wants beer so he can stop wanting Gansey. He wants whiskey so he can stop wanting fucking Declan.

His only relief comes when she strips away the bandages on his forearms and daubs antiseptic over the gouges still red and swollen all down his wrists, when the cotton ball catches on the thick black stitches and pain shoots like fire down his spine. It whites his mind out for a moment. Ronan will take any moment he can get.

He sleeps. He wakes up. He sleeps. 

When he wakes up he can see Declan’s sullen form hunched against the observation window and Matthew holding himself, gazing hopefully up at Declan. They’re talking, and Ronan wants to hear. But a warm hand slides over his and Gansey bends over him and laces their fingers together and Ronan almost gasps with relief. “Gansey.”

“Ronan,  _ why _ ?” Gansey is Gansey and his earnest confusion and worry and the utter lack of anger in his face is so familiar that Ronan wants to cry. He wants to hate that Gansey can see right through him and immediately presses his hands over Ronan’s and sighs. “No, okay, you don’t have to….”

Ronan hates that he can tell Gansey’s been crying. He’s all white and drawn and he always forgets to wipe his nose so there’s a sheen of snot in his philtrum

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles. He will apologize to two people and one can’t hear him anymore so he gives Gansey what he can.

Gansey whispers: “I know. I know, Ronan, but….”

The door opens again and the look on Gansey’s face says everything. Gansey is never helpless. Gansey is in control. Of Ronan. Of  _ Declan _ . But now he looks at Ronan like his words are all caught up behind his teeth. And, mysteriously, he says: “I’m sorry, but….”

The ‘but’ terrifies Ronan.

Gansey kissing him hard on the forehead and leaving him alone with Declan and a doctor he’s never seen before is even more terrifying. So he says, “Oh, well if we’re having a fucking party.”

Declan goes stiff all over and Ronan can’t breathe around the  _ thing  _ gathering up in his throat. He wants Gansey back. He wants to shove his thumb into his mouth and chew at his nails.

Declan is back to his imperious self but Ronan can’t unsee the cracks he’s been shown and so he sits up and girds himself, pulling his knees into his chest and wrapping his arms around himself and taking a deep breath. “Go the fuck on,” he spits.

There’s a long moment where everyone in the room looks out at the minefield between them and Declan and Gansey isolate all the bombs.

“You need help,” Gansey says, prepared to take fire if only to make sure Declan doesn’t end up getting them all blown up. “Ronan, you know that.”

Ronan stares like he might find the answer, the unspoken secret, that seems stuck between Gansey’s teeth. Gansey looks back at Declan and tries again, but he can’t speak and it doesn’t matter how many times before Gansey has submitted to this particular look he doesn’t now.

“I discussed the situation with the doctors while you were...incapacitated--” Ronan snorts “--and you need to be somewhere where we can keep an eye on you.”

Ronan waits. Declan can’t stand silence. Especially unpleasant silence. Ronan can see what’s coming and the last thing he wants to do is make this easy for Declan.

Gansey opens his mouth, but Declan speaks first. Loud. Too loud. “You’re staying here. Ronan. When you’re stable they’re moving to the psych ward.”

Ronan snorts. “Okay.”

“I’m serious, Ronan. You--”

Things start to go blurry again when Declan gestures violently and the room clears. Ronan doesn’t care about the pleading look Gansey shoots him, doesn’t forgive him.

Declan is not done with him. Declan is completely, totally finished. Declan’s voice hovers on the verge of breaking and he pushes through. “You told me you’d try, damn it, and you didn’t. You don’t want to go to school, fine. You want to drink, fine. This is...I’m finished. You don’t care anymore but  _ this _ will  _ not happen _ on my watch. Do you hear me? I  _ will not _ sit with Matthew in another fucking waiting room while we wait for--” he inhales sharply and pinches the bridge of his nose, a gesture so familiar it makes Ronan ache. “Do you fucking hear me?”

Ronan is used to being the one who’s out of control, the one people tell to quiet down, settle down, calm down, the one whose mouth outpaces his mind and the one who has to choke back apologies because sometimes he just  _ can’t stop _ the things that want to come out of his mouth no matter how much he ought to. He’s used to Declan, stalwart and pointedly unaffected by Ronan’s violence, who will deck him hard and then stroke his hair back into place and say: “Now go inside and clean yourself up.”

This Declan is almost a stranger: wild and unperformed, mussed and entirely human. Entirely  _ touchable _ .

Ronan sticks his fingers into his mouth again because he suspects the taste of blood is the only cure for the way his heart is racing. He does not apologize, but the words sit heavy on his tongue.

The room goes still, too full of feeling to leave room for words. Declan shoves a hand through his hair and lets out long, shuddering breath through his nose. “It’s not forever,” he offers in a soft voice. “But it’s also not an option.”

“Bullshit,” Ronan croaks. “You’re not locking me up.”

“I’m not talking you through this. You made your bed.”

Ronan swallows hard. “You can’t just--”

“I can. I did. The papers are signed.”

Ronan opens his mouth to argue, because he  _ must _ , he  _ has to _ , protest, but there aren’t any words that will placate Declan, that will change his mind. Ronan shuts his mouth.

Declan turns and strides out, but he does not slam the door.

  
  
  


Ronan doesn’t really get time to process before the door opens softly and Gansey peers in, giving him a little wave like a white flag.  _ I come in peace _ . He waits for Ronan to beckon him in, which feels like the answer to Ronan’s most recent prayer. At least he has control over something.

Slowly, Gansey lowers himself onto the bed and reaches out like Ronan’s going to bite him, rests one hand on Ronan’s knee over the blanket. Ronan can’t bear the tender, pitying look Gansey aims his way and instead stares down at his hands, at the thick bandages swathing his forearms, at the stains seeping through. He smears the blood coagulating at his left index fingertip where he gnawed his cuticle away.

“Like he said,” Gansey murmurs, stroking him a bit. Only Gansey is ever allowed. “It’s only a little while. Only until you’re better. Until….”

Ronan doesn’t think  _ better _ is an option for him, but he can’t say that without hurting Gansey. He can’t bring himself to hurt Gansey again. Abruptly, he feels like crying and he can’t even punch anything to make the feeling go away.

“I’ll come visit,” Gansey offers helplessly. “Every weekend Whenever they’ll let me. I’ll come visit and you can tell me how--” He slams his mouth shut when Ronan chokes on a sob. “Ronan.”

Gansey doesn’t know what to do with emotion. His parents never yell, never spanked him, his sister is older in a way that means he never really had to see her cry. It’s a miracle he can handle Ronan, who feels out of control all the time. But he touches Ronan’s shoulder gently, squeezing rhythmically like that’s going to help stem the flow of tears. It’s humiliating that he can’t stop crying even when Gansey is trying so hard. “Ronan,” Gansey says firmly. Like he’s saying  _ stop crying _ . “It’ll be okay. Eventually.”

Ronan has never been able to disagree with Gansey so he just keeps quiet.

  
  



End file.
